When you first started your Shopify store, you likely spent hours researching the best ways to get your name out there and sell products right away. If you’re reading this, things didn’t turn out the way you wanted. Sales are slow to come, and you’ve been throwing everything and the kitchen sink at increasing sales, waiting for something to stick.
You’ll save time and ultimately money by partnering with an agency that knows what to do to increase your sales. We’re a HubSpot Partner Agency that uses the powerful combination of HubSpot and Shopify to get amazing results for our clients.
If you’re lost in the muck looking for ways to increase your sales but are having problems sifting through all the blogs out there offering advice that may or may not work in your circumstance, we can help. You need a list of the things you should try first that would offer you the most impact— more sales. Below we offer you some of the tips we use to increase Shopify sales.
#1 Get Customers to Open and Read Emails
Your goal is for customers to open and read your emails and then visit your store. Getting them to open and then click inside the email is vital to brand engagement, but many get this part wrong. How many emails do you delete without looking at them daily? Below are some practical tips for getting customers engaged with your brand via email.
Keep It Short and Sweet
No one has time to read a huge wall of text. Plan to limit your emails to just a few sentences. Take advantage of the subject line and what little words you have to pack in value where you can. You should aim for less than 90 characters in the subject line or about eight words.
Make It Personal
You don’t want emails to feel like mass emails, especially if you try to personalize them but miss the mark. Aim for a mix of text and imagery that looks like it took effort. Use the customer’s name and use the data you have on them. We’ll talk a little bit more about customer data in the abandoned cart section.
Don’t Be Boring
No one likes a boring email. Make emails fun with images, pictures of embedded videos, or multiple choice answers that look clickable to get the click. Fun emails engage the customer and leave a lasting impression.
Watch Your Timing
What do you do when you wake up? You check your email and start deleting everything you don’t have time to read. Avoid times that are likely for inbox purge— between 8 AM to 10 AM and 8 PM to midnight.
Look at This Short High Reply Email
This short email is very effective in re-engaging customers and getting a reply:
Subject: [Customer first name], just checking in...
Hello [customer first name],
Are you still interested in learning more about [product/service]?
[Signature]
That’s all there is to it. One trick that sometimes helps the open or reply rate is to set the from field from an actual person versus the company name.
#2 Entice Customers to Click on Ads
You want customers to see your ads and click to find out more information in hopes that they like what they see and make a purchase.
Try an Effective Approach for Cold Customers
Highly effective social media posts for cold customers are typically long, sometimes over 100 words, and “force” customers to click See More to continue reading. Embedded videos or photos of the product help engage customers and tempt them to visit the website or store.
Link to Your Store
Place a link to your store into social media posts so that customers have the opportunity to click through your ad and flow through the sales funnel. However, avoid bit.ly links; they make customers suspicious of a scam.
#3 Create an Abandoned Cart Workflow
With available plugins, you can create your own abandoned cart workflow that notifies customers if they leave something in their cart and do not finish the transaction. They’ll receive an automated email that you write reminding them of what they plan to purchase.
Spice Things Up with a Discount
You don’t want customers to leak through your funnel. Win them back with discounts and emails that entice them to take a second look at your shop.
#4 Use Self-Sustaining Advertisements
Creating a network of customers is difficult but not impossible with a limited marketing budget. Use your network and your social media accounts to your advantage.
Start Your Business Network with Your Own
Ask friends and family to share your social media content or tell their friends about your shop. When working with a limited budget, you can start gaining likes on social media by inviting friends and family members to like the page first. If you plan to host a blog along with your Shopify store, you can share the posts to your personal LinkedIn and other social media accounts.
Invite to Like
When you share social media posts, invite those who engage but don’t like your page to like it. It’s an effective way to get likes because they are already somewhat aware of your brand and are engaged with your posts.
#5 Offer Free Shipping
At least half of all customers abandon their shopping carts due to shipping charges. Even with a threshold, offering free shipping is an excellent way to keep customers who would otherwise shop somewhere else. Another related issue customers don’t like is unclear extra costs such as taxes and handling fees. Make sure that all costs incurred by the customer are transparent.
#6 Encourage Reviews
Many customers like to check out reviews for products before making a purchase. They also tend to look up store reviews too. Make it easy for customers to trust you by encouraging current customers to review your products and store.
Create a Workflow Asking for a Review
Create a workflow in your CRM to send an email asking customers to review purchased products within whatever timeline you specify. A good time to ask for a review is within the purchase confirmation email.
Treat Negative Reviews as an Opportunity
Don’t feel dejected when you receive a negative review. You cannot make everyone happy. Treat this moment as one of opportunity. Use the opportunity to respond and fix your customer’s issue and let your customer service shine. Other customers will seek out negative reviews to see how you respond to them.
#7 Create Brand Awareness
Ads, social media presence, great products, and a unique logo help to create brand awareness. With so many different online stores out there, you need to stand out.
Try Adding Some Fun Content
Some fun content to create leads are quizzes and contests. IQ quizzes are very popular, where you ask a series of questions about a topic to see how much the customer knows. For example, if your shop sells drones and accessories, you can have a quiz to test customers’ IQ on different types of drones or accessories.
Contests are also fun. You can have a contest to share a social media post, submit certain types of media, or anything really. Your goal is to get customers aware of your brand and products and to engage with you.
Offer Something for Referrals or Social Shares
An incentive such as a discount for shares or referrals helps to spread awareness. Many companies offer free products and discounts for referrals, and it works for them.
#8 Strategize Your Launches
Timing is crucial for product launches. You don’t want to launch a new line of coats during the beginning of summer; they’ll never sell. Make sure timing is on your side.
Plan Campaigns Around Holidays and Seasons
If you offer seasonal products, make sure to launch them right before or at the very start of the season. Look for any type of celebrated or popular event relevant to your offerings and use it in advertising or come up with a clever sale or campaign.
Test Your Prices
Shopify has apps that allow you to test prices. Use price testing apps to see what pricing scheme works best for each category of products. Some apps even pull up competitor pricing data so you can see what others are charging for similar products.
#9 Increase Visibility of Your Shopify Store
If you want your Shopify store to show up in search results, you’ll need to use some SEO techniques to get it there. Getting your shop higher in search results increases the visibility and awareness of your brand.
Optimize Your Store Structure
Customers should be able to navigate your store easily from one page to the next. Ideally, you should have some type of navigation structure at the top of the page. Product descriptions need to be clear and concise. Remember, don’t add random keywords throughout. Your page content is high quality and readable.
Include High-Quality SEO
Don’t forget to use relevant keywords on each product page. Consistency is key when using target keywords. When you write out the product descriptions, make sure to use specific relevant terminology so that customers who want a specific item you have can find you. Lastly, always write for the intended customer.
Optimize Your Product Images
Shopify allows you to edit image names. Set all of your alt text descriptions to include product keywords and a good description of the image. You do not want to stuff keywords here. Make sure the text is in plain English and readable. The images also need to be compressed to improve page load speed.
#10 Make Use of Shopify’s Tools
Shopify offers many tools and apps you can use for promoting your store. Look through their app catalog, and you’ll see apps for everything.
Use Product Reviews Shopify App
If you want product reviews to show up in your shop, you must use the official Product Reviews app. The app works with all Shopify themes. It offers you the chance to showcase the quality of your products and customer support.
Make Use of Integrations
You can integrate Shopify into your HubSpot CRM for better automation of your ecommerce store. Some benefits of integrating include better analysis of shop data, syncing of contacts, and the advantage of automating marketing campaigns.
Learn from the Pros
We’re a proud HubSpot Partner Agency that can help you get amazing results from Shopify. We help our clients come up with a winning strategy to improve sales and marketing techniques. Contact us at Selworthy today to find out how we can improve the sales in your Shopify store.
